Road to Sorrow's End

(2004)(Book 49 in the Prince Valiant series)A novel by Hal Foster and John Cullen Murphy

The perennial, full-color series continues.In this volume, Arn, Son of Valiant, is heir to the throne of Thule. As king-to-be he must be careful in his choice of a bride, but his heart belongs to Lydia, the daughter of a savage Viking chieftain, whose mores don't exactly match those of his prospective in-laws. Fate intervenes as, during a trip through the icy mountains of Thule, Lydia slips and plunges to her death. Shattered by grief, Arn undertakes a long, perilous odyssey... Fantagraphics' deluxe, full-color editions of Prince Valiant run chronologically, and Volume 49 includes work from the years 1979-1980. Valiant's creator, Hal Foster, died in 1982; this is the penultimate volume in the series. Each volume in the series presents close to a year's worth of strips per volume in an oversized format showcasing the strip's spectacular color pages. With its thrilling continuities of a fictitious knight in the era of King Arthur's Court, Prince Valiant set a new standard for the serial drama when it debuted in 1937. It was Foster who introduced illustrative techniques-and the sensibilities and standards of such illustrative greats as Howard Pyle-to the comics page. He is still considered, 20 years after his death and 65 years since Prince Valiant debuted, to be comics' supreme classicist, and the strip continues to live on in over 100 newspapers across America.